Elegy
by JeannieMac
Summary: Post ep for Stray season 3: Alex Eames at the funeral of the two slain police officers, and afterward. Grief, joy, the beginnings of new life...in more ways than one. BA friendship with some UST, if you want to see it that way...
1. Chapter 1

ELEGY – Chapter One

_Disclaimer: all together now…All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of Universal Studios, NBC and Dick Wolf et al. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment, not for money. No infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended._

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Alex knew it would be hard, coming to the funeral. She braced herself for it as her taxi pulled to a stop by the church and she saw the barriers, the TV cameras corralled off to the side, the PA system set up for the crowds of mourners. As she maneuvered herself out onto the sidewalk, a man in religious robes hurried by, carrying a large framed photo of Officer Gilman looking young and proud at his Academy graduation, probably destined to be propped up on the altar. _Guess the Department decided to go all out for the sympathy vote,_ she thought. She had to struggle not to roll her eyes when, from her seat inside the sanctuary, she heard the motorcade pull up outside and the bagpipes start to skirl "Amazing Grace."

Oh yes, she had her cynicism turned up high – but even her most tried-and-true defense mechanism couldn't keep some things from resonating painfully in memory. The faces of the pallbearers, stone-hard with grief held in check…the way the minister's sermon was punctuated by the soft sounds of people crying…and maybe most of all, the sight of Martin Louis' widow walking behind his coffin, stiff and dry-eyed. They've never met, but Alex _knows_, with bone-deep certainty, that Cynthia Louis looked so angry because she was holding herself together by the merest thread. _She doesn't want comfort, because she'll fall apart if anyone dares to offer it. And once she falls apart, she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to put the pieces back together. Oh yes, I remember._

The service left her restless, uncomfortable from sitting still too long and wrestling with a difficult, agitated sort of sadness. It didn't help that she felt awkward and out of place, sitting alone at the end of a pew full of people who obviously knew each other and the slain officers. She'd said to Bobby that she'd meet him at the church, but she'd forgotten that the church would be small, and that (aside from a few representatives of the NYPD brass and one pregnant detective) only Louis' and Gilman's own colleagues would get to join their families and friends in the sanctuary. So Bobby was somewhere outside with Bishop and Deakins, standing at attention with the other cops who had come from precincts all over the city to pay their respects.

She should have been out there too, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of them in her dress blues. But she can't stand for that long, these days, and her uniform doesn't fit. _I don't fit_, she thinks with sudden bleak misery, and then pushes the thought away, scolding herself for being melodramatic.

She's sitting on a low wall at the top of the church steps, waiting for the people and cars to disperse enough that she can call a cab. The funeral procession has snaked out of sight on its way to the cemetery, and the uniformed cops have broken ranks and are standing in small subdued groups on the sidewalk. She locates Bobby with the Captain and Bishop – hard to miss that striking red hair. A stab of irrational jealousy – _God, she looks good in the uniform_. Bobby catches sight of her watching, and detaches himself from the group.

"Hey," she greets him as he comes up the stairs towards her. A small voice in her mind whispers _wow, he looks good in the uniform too._ She berates it inwardly for being shallow and unprofessional.

"How are you doing?" he asks.

"Fine. Tired," she admits. She wonders when it happened that just being in his presence, talking to him, became something that could comfort her, steady her. He gives her a long look.

"What?" she says.

"Nothing," he shakes his head, looking around in that aimless way of his and finally settling next to her on the low wall. "I just – I figure things like this must be…difficult," he says, fiddling with something on the band of his cap, not meeting her eyes. "For you. Because of your husband."

She draws in a surprised breath, and then forces herself to let it out slowly. In the whole course of their partnership, she can probably count on one hand the number of times either of them has mentioned Rory. Her first fight-or-flight impulse is to deflect, make some light-hearted comment, find a reason to move away…but the thought of standing up seems just too exhausting right now – and she finds that she can't cavalierly dismiss the mention of her husband, either. Not today.

"Yeah," she says carefully. "Seeing their wives – I remember how that felt. It's hard."

He doesn't say anything, for which she is profoundly grateful. She takes another deep breath.

"Rory's funeral wasn't such a circus, though."

"No?" He gives her a quick sideways look.

"No way. Oh, the Department offered – full honours, the whole nine yards – but he wouldn't have wanted it…the formality, the rules, people wearing black all over the place and being miserable." She hears an echo of Rory in her voice as she speaks, something of his inflection and way of putting words together. It's been a long time since that happened, she realizes with a pang.

"You would have hated all the fuss too," Bobby says, and it's not a question. She hasn't seen him much lately; it's easy to forget how well he knows her. She manages a wry smile.

"Yeah. We had a private service at the church where he was baptized." And his buddies at the squad held a large and raucous wake at the local pub. She didn't go – couldn't stand the thought of them coming up one by one to awkwardly tell her how sorry they were. She regrets that now, wishes that she had been there, to hear the stories…to say goodbye to Rory with laughter, the way he would have wanted her to.

She passes a hand over her face. _God, I'm tired._ As if in response to that, the baby makes its presence known, executing a slow roll. _Ouch. _She shifts on the cold stone, presses a hand to the side of her stomach. _You better sleep when I sleep, tonight,_ she tells it silently.

Bobby leans in just slightly, nudging her with his elbow. "Eames – let me drive you home."

"You? Drive? I don't think so," she says automatically, and part of her breathes a sigh of relief at being back on familiar ground with him. Another part feels something like regret – feels that maybe it was…nice…to let Bobby into a part of her life that she's always kept private. Her mind shies away from the implications of that. _Familiar ground_, she repeats to herself.

"No, seriously," she tells him. "Don't worry about it. I'll just get a cab now that the road's clear."

She can see that he's about to protest, but then something catches his eye behind her.

"Mr. Eames," he says, standing up. _What?_ She twists awkwardly around.

"Hello, Alexandra," says her dad. He's in uniform – she can't remember the last time she saw him wearing the full kit. _Was it Jen's wedding?_ He nods to Bobby. "Goren."

"Dad. What are you doing here?" It comes out more abruptly than she meant it to, and she feels Bobby look at her. She answers her own question.

"Jen told you I was coming, didn't she?" She tries to master her irritation.

"I wanted to pay my respects," her dad says mildly, "and I thought maybe you'd be glad of a ride home."

She sighs. This business of talking to her sister almost every day – most of the time she likes it. She's grateful for the way the surrogacy has made them better friends, and it's good to have someone willing to listen and sympathize with all her complaints about pregnancy. She remembers the relief she felt when she realized that her sister actually _needed_ to know every detail…that Alex's initial efforts to downplay the upheavals of her condition were making Jen feel left out, like salt on the open wound of her inability to carry this child herself.

But their new closeness has had one really annoying side effect, which is that her whole family knows a lot more than she'd like about what she's doing on any given day. She can just picture Jen getting concerned at the thought of her going to a police funeral, telling her mom who would discuss it with her dad, all of them thinking _god, that'll be hard for poor Alex_. She hates the knowledge that people are scrutinizing and pitying her. It makes her feel exposed, itchy and hot with embarrassment.

"Dad…" she starts. But he's only trying to take care of her, and what is she going to do – start a fight on the church steps in front of half the NYPD?

_And I'm tired and sad and I want to go home_. So she capitulates, less than gracefully.

"Never mind. I'll come with you." She cringes inwardly at how sulky she sounds. Her dad ignores her tone.

"I'm parked around the corner. Are you okay to walk?"

"Yes, Dad, I'm _fine_," she grits out. Then she turns to Bobby, who's watching with a small, amused smile. _Damn him. Figures he'd be on the spot to see me regress to age sixteen._

"I'm glad you've got a lift," he says. "Go home and get some rest, okay?"

"Sure," she says, trying to smile. He bends slightly to catch her eyes, giving her another searching look. _God, don't do that,_ she thinks involuntarily. She is suddenly, alarmingly close to tears, and Bobby being gentle and concerned and perceptive is practically guaranteed to put her over the edge. He looks like he might want to give her a hug, and longing for the simple contact hits her like a sandbag behind the knees. But they don't really hug, she and Bobby, so there's no standard operating procedure. Neither of them seems to know how to bridge the gap between them, and her dad is standing waiting, and in the end Bobby settles for touching her shoulder.

"I'll talk to you later," he says, and she nods and turns away. He always says that these days, but it's rare for him to actually call. He and Bishop have probably already caught another case or several, and his focus will narrow to just the work, the way it always does. _And that's fine,_ she tells herself, not for the first time. _No reason for him to act any differently._ _You'll be back to the partnership in a month or two. _

It's silly to feel bereft.

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

ELEGY – Chapter Two

_See Chapter One for disclaimers._

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Once at home, Alex falls asleep on the couch in the late afternoon sun. When she wakes suddenly, flailing out of a pile of cushions to a sitting position, it's dark outside and she's got tears on her cheeks from a dream that she can't remember. She's pretty sure that Rory was in it, though – _no surprise there, I guess_, she thinks wearily.

She levers herself off the couch and moves slowly into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. _Rory, you bastard, if you're going to haunt my dreams, you could at least surface in my conscious memory and keep me company,_ she mutters to herself. It's a long-neglected habit – she used to carry on conversations with him all the time, especially in the year or two right after he died. She'd tell him stories about work, things she'd heard on the radio, gossip she'd picked up about his friends in the force…but after a while it got harder and harder to see him in her mind's eye, or maybe she just stopped needing him around. She remembers feeling guilty about not missing him so much…and then even the guilt mostly faded, or she buried it. Now, standing at the counter, not even knowing why, she tries to conjure up his face for the first time in years.

The baby kicks suddenly, hard enough to make her gasp. She sits down at the table, clutching her mug with both hands, and all at once she's crying again, tears coursing hot down her face and neck.

_Oh Rory_, she thinks. _What am I doing?_

She wonders what he would think of her surrogacy, if he were alive. But no, they would probably have had kids of their own by now, if all had gone according to their plan. She wouldn't be sitting like this at her kitchen table, alone and exhausted from carrying a child that won't be hers when it's born.

And yet that idea – the possibility of _this_ baby not existing – shakes her to her marrow. _No_ is the only coherent thought she can isolate from the groundswell of feeling that surges up from depths that she didn't even know existed. She takes a shuddering breath and spreads her hands, warm from the mug, against her belly. Feeling the baby move at her touch. _No. No regrets, I promise,_ she tells him – realizing in that exact moment that she does think it's a boy, even though Jen and Mike and she all agreed to wait until the birth to find out the sex.

_Oh. Hello, little boy. Hello, my nephew._ And suddenly she's smiling through her tears, joy welling up all unexpected into the empty spaces of her soul. _Wow. I better be careful not to let slip to your mom and dad that we've been introduced._

The thought makes her giggle slightly hysterically, and she covers her face with both hands for a second. _God. Where is all this coming from?_ she wonders. It's grief and aching tenderness and oh, _love_ – she didn't expect so much love – all mixed up together, and it hurts like hell, like a knife cut to an old, scarred-over wound. _And__maybe that's exactly what it is_, she thinks in a flash of sudden clarity.

She's always been proud of how she picked up and carried on after Rory was killed; how she made herself strong out of her grief. Part of that, she knows, meant building walls, higher with every year that passed - walls of assertiveness and independence and dry, sarcastic humour to cope with the darker parts of her job, to keep loneliness at bay. There was a price, of course, a part of her heart that closed off and went silent, but she figured it was worth it. She lived with it, made it part of who she was.

And now…now there's this baby. Jen's baby. _My nephew._ Chipping at the walls. Making her into someone new, and she's only just realized it.

Early on, she read in one of the pregnancy books that her ribcage would soften and expand to accommodate the baby as it grew…she remembers how she flinched at the mental image of her very bones being rearranged. Now, she imagines that maybe her heart is doing the same thing – cracking and growing to encompass this huge and overwhelming feeling. Body and soul, both remade from the inside out.

It's not just the baby, growing towards birth. _It's you and me both, kiddo._

The knowledge knocks the breath out of her. She sits there at the table in the dark, wondering, for a long time. Trying to grasp it, trying to imagine how they'll turn out, she and her nephew. Finally, the ringing of the phone interrupts her dazed contemplation. The caller display reads "R. Goren."

"Bobby?" She knows her voice betrays her surprise that he has actually called. She hopes he won't also detect just how glad she is to hear his voice. _Familiar ground._ Someone who knows her, sometimes better than she's comfortable with...but right now she's just painfully grateful.

"Yeah. I said I'd talk to you later…sorry, is it too late?" He sounds nervous.

"Oh – right. Thanks for calling – and, no, it's not too late," she stumbles.

"Are you okay? You sound…"

She's simultaneously too tired and too worked up to pretend. "Like I've been crying? Well, I have."

Silence on the other end of the line, and she's about to beat a retreat, cover the unaccustomed openness of her admission with a sarcastic remark. Then,

"I'm - sorry," he says tentatively. "Is there anything I can do?"

She takes a deep, shaky breath, willing herself not to burst into tears again over the phone. _Why is it that acts of kindness are the hardest to handle?_

"It's okay," she says, and it's actually the truth. "I'm all right now."

"Are – are you sure? I mean, do you want some company?"

"Thanks, Bobby," she says, touched. They've never really spent time together as friends, other than going to the bar after work – and, a handful of times, to the gym or the shooting range. She wonders what they'd do if he came over now, just to hang out. Would they watch a movie? Talk? She stops trying to picture it when she realizes she's actually tempted to take him up on the offer.

"I really appreciate it," she says. "But it's late, I should go to bed – and actually, I do have company," she adds on sudden wicked impulse. There's a taken-aback pause.

"Oh – sorry," stutters Bobby. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything, I – sorry, Eames."

"Bobby." She feels a smile stretch across her face, at the fact that he seems to be assuming exactly what she meant him to assume, and at the way he's reacting – even though she has no right or reason to expect him to be jealous. None at all. _No siree_.

"I meant the _baby_," she clarifies.

"Oh." She can see his small sheepish grin as clearly as if he was standing in front of her.

"Right. Of course. Well, good. I mean – I'm glad that you're not alone."

"Yeah," she says softly. "Me too. Good night, Bobby."

When she falls asleep the second time, she dreams of Rory, smiling at her. In the dream, she's so glad to see him. There's no anger, no grief, no guilt – just the memory of love, free and clear. "I have so much to tell you," she says, feeling her nephew move inside, making room for new joy.

_And I dreamed I was dying_

_I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly_

_And looking back down at me_

_Smiled reassuringly_

_And I dreamed I was flying_

_And high up above, my eyes could clearly see_

_The statue of Liberty_

_Sailing away to sea_

_And I dreamed I was flying…_

-- Paul Simon, "American Tune"

END


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